An Unforgivable Act
by Jestie Uchiha
Summary: A story of old, a legend, about a wolf's spiral into madness and the genocide that followed. There's a reason that not killing a wolf's imprint is the Quileute shape-shifters' most sacred law. One-shot. Takes place before the events of Twilight. Very Dark.


**_An Unforgivable Act_**

**_A/n: _**_Don't own Twilight. Read and review please!_

_TTT_

_"It's like... gravity moves... suddenly. It's not the earth holding you here anymore, she does..."_

_-Jacob_

TTT

When he first sees her corpse, it feels like he's floating- no longer is there anything tethering him to this world, no longer is his gravity in place. Suddenly, he doesn't belong anywhere, anymore; especially not here, in this world, amongst the living. It is a surreal sense of displacement.

Then, the agony hits.

It's crippling, and he can't stand under the force and pressure of it. He falls to the ground, letting out an agonized howl.

His still-beating heart has been torn from his chest, he'd swear. He feels as its simultaneously squeezed and shredded, turning into nothing more than a mangled mess, a mockery of what it used to be, and infuriatingly still bearing.

His pack whines their remorse next to him, knowing it must be hard, but knowing it had to be done. His imprint had turned, after all, had become a monster, a filthy bloodsucker. Some very small part of his mind recognizes this- that she was a hazard and it had to be done- but the rest of him is too busy wallowing in his agony and sense of betrayal to acknowledge this consensus.

Through the pain he wonders at how they seem unaffected by the sheer torture he's suffering. He doesn't notice that he can no longer hear their thoughts, that the connection with his pack got severed the moment he saw the glazed, dead eyes of his everything.

He can hardly notice that tie being severed, when such a larger, more important tie has just been severed as well.

Tendrils wrap around his throat until every sound he makes becomes strangled, there is a lasting ache pulsing with his every heartbeat, and he shifts back into a human without realizing it. It's as though he is missing a part of himself, like he lost an arm or a leg and can still feel the phantom pain; except the ache is all over, not just in one concentrated area, and what he lost is worth more than any body part.

He can't move; doesn't want to move. His pack tries to move him, to comfort him, but he resists, snarling and growling even in his human form. He body is shaking, from anguish or something else entirely he knows not, but he can't control it, doesn't want to control it.

Finally, when he can no longer stand the presence of his pack- of the _traitors and murders_- he demands they leave, voice rough and in mid-sob. Reluctantly, they do, and he is left alone to his thoughts.

He drags himself across the forest ground and claws at her ashes, apologies that he hadn't gotten there in time to save her spilling from his lips in a torrent of senseless, half-formed words.

Bloodsucker or no bloodsucker, she was his everything.

* * *

><p>Vaguely, he can feel his sanity is slipping. But it's only a passing notice, an incomplete thought crowded in with more incomplete thoughts that fail to matter to him.<p>

His thoughts entwine with each other too intimately to really pick out one from the rest. He is in a constant state of disorientation, unable to concentrate on anything.

He doesn't care.

He hardly eats. He can't tell when he's hungry, when he requires food. His constant state of hollowness is too similar to the hollow pangs of hunger for him to differentiate between the two.

He doesn't care.

He can barely sleep. When he does sleep, it's restless and filled with dreams of her mangled body and burning corpse, and of re-enhanced mental torment. Sometimes he shifts mid-nightmare and demolishes his room in his rage. Most of the house looks like a tornado has swept through it, as a result.

He doesn't care.

He reeks; he hasn't showered in weeks. But it doesn't matter one way or the other, because he hasn't left his house in weeks, and there is no one around to smell him.

Besides, _she _thought he reeked whether he'd showered or not, towards the end.

The few times he gets around to eating, the food is either stale or going bad. He needs to go shopping, to get some fresh food.

He doesn't care.

People worry. He doesn't care. They try to help. He ignores them.

He doesn't want their help, and if he needs it, well, he doesn't care. He doesn't care about anything.

* * *

><p>He's a broken man with no purpose. With his very reason for existing gone, he's lost and not quite sure what to do with himself.<p>

He's little more than a zombie, doing the bare minimum required to keep himself from dying. He feels as undead as any vampire, and he wonders fleetingly why his kind must hate them so.

But the thought is just that: fleeting. It has just begun to barely cross his mind before another, irrelevant thought takes its place, followed by another, and another.

Decisions no longer have any logic or strategy behind them; he doesn't think before he acts. Instead, every action is the result of a whim- he's reckless and impulsive, where before he was collective and thoughtful.

It's a bit like being drunk, he can't help but notice.

His actions and thoughts are unrestrained and incoherent, and there are times when he forgets what he did the previous day- sometimes, when it's especially bad, he'll forget what he did the previous hour.

He doesn't have it in him to get drunk, though. While becoming an alcoholic might ease the pain with delirium, he thinks he's already too delirious for it to affect him; though even if he could drink his pain away, he wouldn't.

He deserves it, after all. For not being able to save her, he deserves all the pain in the world, and then some.

* * *

><p>It takes some months of stumbling around in his pain-hazed, half-aware stupor to finally find a purpose.<p>

It's when his pack visits, finally sick of his morose ways, determined to pull him out of his grief. Neither party has yet to realize they're no longer actually pack members.

They have to let themselves in, for he has not the energy to open a door, let alone entertain guests.

He can feel himself bristling with each person that enters his threshold.

_'Murderers…' _his mind whispers as his pack crowds his living room, '_Traitors…_'

They talk, but he doesn't hear what they are saying. Their voices are drowned out by the pounding of blood in his ears, and the accusing clamors echoing inside his head.

It starts off as mere whispers, but as time passes the voices get louder and louder, until they are screaming and clawing at his mind. His pack-mates' figures begin to distort, stretching and shifting and soon he sees them laughing and jeering with the faces of monsters instead of friends.

He struggles to remain human, feeling the tell-tale signs of a shift. His struggle is made harder when he sees his alpha's imprint, sees the love in their eyes. He wants what they have, what he used to have, _what they took from him_.

He imagines them looking at him with mocking and smugness in their eyes as they hold each other close.

Suddenly, a thought sneaks past the voices, and all goes quiet.

_If I can't have my imprint, why should they have theirs?_

Seeing that they are not making any leeway, his pack invites him to next week's bonfire and leave, just as the rage, long overdue, kicks in.

* * *

><p>He tears apart the house in a blind fury, destroying anything that had managed to survive any previous shifts.<p>

His blood boils, and anger clouds his mind like a fog, wrapping around it and holding it tight, embracing his mind like a lover.

_Murders! Traitors! Murderers! Traitors! Murderers! Traitors…! THIEVES! _

It's an endless chant inside his skull, and he growls and snarls as hate pumps through his veins. In-between the war cries inside his mind, he swears he can hear his imprint demanding that he avenge her.

He's determined not to fail her again. If it is revenge she wants, it is revenge she shall get.

He finally has a purpose, a reason for existing. It's exhilarating and maddening all at once.

The sudden intake of emotion is overwhelming; it's the most he's felt in weeks. He has yet to decide whether he likes it or not.

* * *

><p>He's hesitant to shift, because then his pack would know his plans. But his mind is still in scrambles, and the possible threat to his plans doesn't really register. He shifts and begins to run.<p>

He has only the vaguest notion of an idea, and no actual plan. For all that he suddenly feels and cares about again, his mind has not returned to its previous state.

His sanity, at his point, has been completely shredded. Some fundamental part of his cognizance has been lost, and functioning and rationalizing like he used to has become impossible.

It doesn't deter him, though, for he is still able to keep a grasp on his new-found goal.

Killing the imprints of his pack has become his single-minded obsession.

* * *

><p>He knows where they all live, of course, and tracking them is easy. He starts with his alpha's imprint, for ordering the death of his own.<p>

He approaches the house, an odd thrill of anticipation and mania temporarily soothing the ever-present ache of loss.

He finds his first victim, and she doesn't stand a chance. He pounces her, dragging her to the floor with his weight and perhaps breaking some bones while he's at it, if her cries are anything to go by.

He lowers his maw and tears into her as though she were one of the vampires he used to hunt, heedless of the warm blood that gushed out and declared otherwise.

He leaves for the next one when she is but a mangled pile of body parts, much like his had been before they burned her as he wailed his agony. If there are pieces of fetus mixed in with the female, he cares not.

He knows he will not be interrupted because his pack patrols around this time, and he knows they do not hear his thoughts as he does not hear theirs. In his maddened state, he fails to realize the significance of this.

He mauls imprint after imprint, tearing at their organs and mutilating their delicate flesh. He doesn't care if the imprint is still a child, or pregnant, or used to be his friend. None of it matters. All that matters is making his pack suffer what he suffered.

He's rabid by the time he's done, and doesn't hold back to just attacking imprints. He attacks anything he comes across, frenzied and blind with bloodlust. Had he the sense of mind, he might have made the connection between his behavior and that of a vampire.

He knows they've found their imprints when he hears the first howl of agony. In response, he throws his head back and howls his victory and challenge.

Froth gathers at his mouth, and he knows he has the advantage. His pack is new to the grief; new to the crippling agony that devours all will and new to the sense of displacement that will make them feel more likely to float away than anything else.

Also, though he had still yet to realize it, they will be new to the sensation of being without pack. When the strongest tie of all breaks, all the others are soon to follow.

* * *

><p>He encounters his alpha yowling in suffering next to his imprint's grisly corpse.<p>

He approaches without caution, wild glee in his eyes. His alpha looks up, and it went to show for the mental strength of an alpha that he was able to stand in the face of this fresh grief.

The two wolves stare each other down, circling each other and growling and snarling with equal amounts of fervor.

He makes the first move, lunging at his alpha. For the first time, he wonders at their lack of shared thoughts, but has no time or interest in pursuing the thoughts.

The two clash midair and it's a battle for dominance, a war of teeth. They snap and bite and growl, wrestling and aiming for the soft underbelly and throat of their opponent.

In the distance, there are more howls of agony, which shows that the rest of his pack have found their imprints, having most likely left in search for them the moment they noticed the fate of their alpha's.

Though normally his alpha would have the upper hand, he is still new to the sensation of having lost his gravity, of no longer being a part of the earth as it is.

Unlike his alpha, he's had months to adjust. And though his grip on sanity is slight at best, he's more used to functioning without his everything than his alpha is. Plus, his madness helps him, makes him brutal and unpredictable in battle.

He finally manages to get a good grip on his alpha's throat, and he sinks his teeth viciously into the vulnerable flesh before yanking back and tearing out a bloody chunk. He doesn't stop there, and continues to attack that spot until long after his ex-alpha has gone cold and dead, eyes glassy and unseeing.

He steps back, long, shaggy fur matted with blood and turns to find the others of his pack.

He's crossed a line he hadn't realized was there and now that he's started, he can't stop.

It wasn't his original plan to kill his pack as well as their imprints- where's the suffering, then? It makes it too easy on them- but his uncoordinated mind doesn't remember this, and knows nothing but the need to rip and shred until the life bleeds out of everyone he used to know.

* * *

><p>He kills two more pack members before he is overwhelmed by the remaining three, who team up despite their anguish to take him down. Their teamwork is more sloppy than normal, without the mental link, but they've been pack members long enough to overcome this and still work together.<p>

When he is killed, he accepts death with open arms, eager to be reunited with his imprint. Life is not worth living, and his need for revenge is sated, so he feels no anger or sorrow when he is finally overwhelmed. He simply accepts it.

Later, the surviving three establish the most sacred law of the Quileute tribe: No one may harm another wolf's imprint, even in the case of said imprint being a threat.

After that, they don't last more than a few months each before eventually taking their own lives, unable to live with the constant pain of missing a part of themselves.

**Fin.**


End file.
